The range limit again.

from Stardock Forums
I know everytime somebody mentioned that sometimes AI plays with no range limit. Starbases have been found as an explaination to show that they were following the rules.

But wow I had a major race take a system in my space 6 months into the game. It turned out that the rest of their systems were on the other side of the galaxy. It took me several years and two starbases to reach them.

Good thing though is the supid creatures lost the system to me due to lack of influeance. They were totally surrounded by my systems.
356 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
There must be something here because so many complain about it. I haven't seen it, but then again I play small maps. Everyone is in range of everyone else.

It might be a cheat, or it might be a bug. If you still have a saved game of right when the AI colony was started, maybe the developers could figure out what happened.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
This is a bug - i saw it 3 times. I have saves.

~SDC~
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Bug with 1st colony ship with 100 population.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I saw it in a recent game, but I let it slide because the race that had it started in a very isolated corner with one other yellow system.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
It's probably a bug, though I haven't ruled out it being an undocumented AI cheat given the lack of response on this matter. To put it simply, the first colony ship of any major AI race (i.e. the one named "XYZ Empire Colony Ship") will always have infinite range. On turn one, this super colony ship will be sent towards a star system far away from the AI's home planet in an effort to expand its sphere of influence, and there may even be a "box in the human player" algorithm that helps in selecting these planets here. The only way to counter this is to settle the targeted planet before these infinite range colony ships arrive, which will instantly turn them back towards their own space, regardless of whether or not they are even aware of your existance.

I have tested these discovered several dozen times by modifying ship sensor ranges so I could observe the movement of AI colony ships from turn one. The result is that I have yet to notice the AI's initial colony ship adhering to ship range limits even once. All games were ran on gigantici maps to idenfity range violations more easily. The difficulty was set to masochist, but I have a huntch the same thing will happen on lower difficulty levels too.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Typo: Second paragraph start "I have tested THIS DISCOVERY..." :notsure:
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
The AI's intial colony ship doesn't have the range limitation. All of it's other ships do. This would suggest that the AI's starting ships aren't initialized correctly, then fixed during the end of turn processing. The colony ship gets a destination on the first turn, and thus the range checking fails for it, but the Survey Ship gets sent off to explore or pick up anomolies and gets caught by the range checking on the second turn.

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Finally looked into this in depth. As Arturus mentioned, the problem was that the first colony ship gets its assignment before ranges are calculated. It only happens to the first ship. Fixing it now, will be in 1.04.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, please note that the minimap doesn't show the ranges of AI ships, so it will be the range of your last ship that shows. I'm fixing it so that it won't show a range if an alien ship is selected.